After 13th November’s atrocities in Paris, with global elites increasingly turning their dreams to a military solution to the ‘existential threat’ posed by terrorism that claims an Islamic Caliphate as its goal, leftists find themselves in a quandary. How to oppose this simplistic militarism — explaining that alienation, caused by the depredations of capitalism combined with the West’s effort to bomb an ideology out of existence, is the real problem to be addressed — while agreeing with those elites that the violent jihadi strain of Islam is utterly inimical to everything we stand for? Max Farrar will make suggestions on how the left can oppose violent Islamism without contributing to Islamophobia. This talk is based on this article in openDemocracy by Max Farrar and Rumana Hashem and will refer to the threats made on Rumana’s life by Bangladeshi Islamists.

Max Farrar is a sociologist and Emeritus Professor at Leeds Beckett University. He is a committee member of Taking Soundings, secretary to the charity RememberOluwale and a Board member of Together for Peace and UK Friends of Abraham’s Path. His PhD thesis about black-led and multi-ethnic social movements in Chapeltown, Leeds, was published at The Struggle for ‘Community’ (Edwin Mellen, 2002). His more recent work on multiculturalism and Islamism appeared in Farrar, Robinson, Valli and Wetherly (ends) Islam in the West (Palgrave 2012). More here